Me. And the things I do.

Tag Archives: craft

1. Naturally, we start with the basic sugar cookie recipe. When you roll them out, instead of using a cookie cutter, use a pizza roller, or knife to cut the dough into 120 1″ squares, bake and let cool. I suggest doing this a day before decorating.

2. For the icing, you will need to make stiff meringue icing, adding water and sugar to meringue powder until it reaches a stiff consistency that you can pipe through a small round tip. Make sure to taste it first, you will know quickly if you have not added enough sugar. Separate into three bowls and dye one bowl black, cover and move to the side. For the second batch you will pick your outline color. my sister decided to outline some cookies in pink to write me a message and some in white, but you can use whatever color you like!

3. Make the same icing recipe, but with more water so that it will spread nicely between the outlines, and set aside. This is the background color so it is best left white.

4. Put the white thick outline frosting in a piping bag with a small round nozzle and carefully pipe around the edge of each cookie. This can be seen in the Bra and Panties tutorial. Let dry completely.

5. Once dry, use a larger round piping nozzle to pipe the softer icing into the middle. You may want a knife to help spread it to the edges so it completely fills in between the outline. Let dry completely.

6. Now we add the letters and values. Use the picture below to carefully hand pipe each letter and number value. I suggest using the small round piping nozzle so you can get fine detail and more easily fix/hide shaky hands or mistakes. Let the black dry completely.

7. This step is optional. If you decided to make a colored outline, carefully outline each tile you want. My sister outlined my name and a “Happy Birthday” message, outlining the blanks between words and adding a pink heart in the center as well. This is where you can get creative though and do whatever you like! (or nothing if you prefer more authentic scrabble cookies).

Et Voila! The best part is sugar cookies are better with age, especially if you are like me and eat them for breakfast dipped in your coffee. They also turn whatever area they are displayed in, into an ongoing scrabble game! Enjoy!

Going through all my old craft supplies in an effort to downsize and I found a huge collection of fabric paint!

Fabric paint and acrylic paint mixed with acrylic medium are around $1-$3 each, so it is really easy to amass a large stash quickly and I couldn’t bear throwing them away. It is a rule in my house that if you don’t use it (or know you have it) for over a year – out it goes! Being the hoarder that I am, I decided to paint shirts for a bachelorette party and hold onto the paint a little while longer.

What you need:

Fabric Paint (or Acrylic paint with Acrylic medium)

Ruler

Pencil

cardboard or card stock

paper plate

Paint brushes (I use cheap $1 isle brushes, nothing fancy)

Note: If you use acrylic without the medium mixed in the paint will be very hard and stiffen the fabric. No bueno.

1. Make sure to put paper down or to work on a surface you don’t mind getting paint on.

2. Lay your shirt out with a stiff piece of cardboard or card stock under the painting surface to prevent paint from bleeding to the other side.

3. Get out your pencil and ruler and lightly draw your design.

Note: It is very hard to get the paint to do clean fine lines on softer cottons, so remember to keep the designs bold. Don’t draw the pencil too dark because it can take a few washes to come out of the fabric (found that out the hard way). You can see below how even with lettering, I made sure to keep the strokes nice and wide.

4. This is where the paint medium comes it really handy. When you pour your paint out onto the paper plate, give it plenty of room to spread out and mix with medium. I suggest going with a 1/4 to 1/2 medium to paint ratio. The medium helps thin the paint so you can smooth out your lines and keep the paint a uniform thickness across the fabric, so if you are struggling, add more medium. For some of my older fabric paints that were a little dry and stiff i added paint medium just to get the consistency. For these I went with a lighter ratio, but it is really up to you to find a consistency you like to work with. Also, the paint dries very quickly, so I suggest working with only one color at a time.

5. To set the paint, you have to steam iron it once it is dry to the touch. I left the paper in between the layers and placed a piece of pressing cloth on top to protect the iron in case the paint was still a little wet. Put the iron on the hottest setting and make sure it has plenty of water in it so you can just steam away! Since you have to iron anyway I added a few iron on gems to this one for a little extra bling.

For the Maids of honor I ended up following a few T-shirt refashion tutorials on Pinterest. I dyed these shirts pink before starting with rit dye. It is a great way to add color cheaply. I really like this ombre tutorial as well, I didn’t find it until after this project so I might have to try it next time.

This project is so easy and perfect for a rainy day or a quick gift. It would be a great party craft for middle school or high school kids as well. Next I think I will make some hand painted outdoor cushions. I think painting on duck canvas will be a bit easier than cotton.

I hope I have inspired you to dig through your old supplies and get a little crafty!

I live on a busy downtown street with a busy alley running by my back door so I invested in pretty curtains early on. However, I am sick of not being able to open the curtains without curious walkers by staring into my house – especially because I often forget to close the curtains until AFTER I get out of the shower.

The previous tenants had used diamond pattern frosted shelf lining on one of the windows in the kitchen. It is only $8 a roll for sizable chunk but it looks old, has a sticky back which make removal an involved process and the tiny grooves make cleaning it a bit more difficult.

After a Pinterest search and a horrendous home depot experience I pulled my head out of my ass and zoomed over to McGuckin’s, my local hardware/we have everything store and discovered Etch Arts Wallpaper for windows!This will run you quite a bit more than the shelf lining, $20-$45 depending on how wide you need, but it is worth every penny. Goes on with water, no adhesive, so while its wet you can easily move your pieces into place, no worries about bubbles or wasting sheets.

This project ended up being SUPER easy – even those who consider themselves to have no crafting or artistic abilities should go for it!

I tried two different techniques for my windows, a stencil approach and a geometric shapes approach.

The stencils were really easy. I set my computer screen as bright as possible and was able to see right through and trace with pencil. I traced the utensils out on the paper side so there wouldn’t be any marks on the film, but then I didn’t want my words to be backwards so I traced those onto the film side. After cutting the pieces out with an exact-o knife, the pencil erased right off with no marks so you can go either way.

What is awesome about this, is that anything you cut out can be used on other windows, as a computer or mirror decal – What?! AWESOME!

The geometric ones I went with because I wanted to see how far I could stretch the smaller sheets (ie spend as little money as possible) – the results were less privacy than the stencil technique, but work really well in the living room where we don’t need as much privacy.

I used my clear quilting ruler again and made a ton of pieces out of the scraps.

This is where it was really helpful to get the window really wet before placing the pieces. If there was plenty of water on the window I could easily slide the small pieces into place and play with how they fit in the frame.

The end result was better than expected!

I suppose because it is my first post it is not catching up at all, but a hello to the world. Either way I have been busy and I have a lot to share.

I finally started piecing this quilt I bought fabric for back in, I don’t know, December? It took forever to cut the 16 wedges for 12 circles each. Sewing them all together I managed to cut my centers with out seam allowance and started over again. Now I’m finishing the corner pieces so my circles can become squares and then circles again. I’m a little scared to piece those, but I get 24 tries so it will look good by the end.

A quilt in progress

I am also the Maid of Honor in a wedding coming up in November, the day after Thanksgiving. The bridal shower is next month and we chose a french cooking theme, with a cooking demonstration and lots of tasty treats. I decided I really wanted to make the treats so there has been a lot of practicing going on.

The first things I made were mint french macaroons, but the recipe I used said to put the temperature at 325 F which was way too low and my macaroons fell flat and came out more like almond lace cookies. Not a bad thing, just not what I wanted.

The second batch were much better. I whisked the eggs much longer and had the oven up at 400F and it made all the difference. This time I added instant coffee and cocoa powder to the mix for a mocha flavor and they came out delicious. I still need to figure out how to make them come out flat on top, and dare I say they were TOO airy this time around.

Mocha Macaroons, second stab

Now that I am making french macaroons I find that I have way too many egg yolks left over and lets face it, the dog can’t eat them all.

So I made a cake.

I suppose it was also an excuse to eat cake and play with my new Neon food coloring, and I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I can call it a total success. It was a sponge cake, but it came out tough and I’m not totally sure what went wrong but I have a few guesses:

1. I may have beaten the yolks too long. I realized much too late in the game that the instructions were referring to beating time by hand, not by kitchen aid. oops.

2. I live over a mile above sea level and didn’t even consider changing the recipe or the temperature when I baked the cake. More and more lately I am realizing how important this is and I really need to start paying more attention.

Neon Sponge Cake

I ate the whole thing anyway, I mean who am I kidding, a little toughness didn’t totally ruin it.

Other than these projects I have a few other things in the works. I craft a lot and my medium seems to change at every whim. I was working a lot with felt, and I will certainly post some of that work as it comes to completions. I have also been working a lot with silk, taffeta and lace to make hair flowers, and last Christmas, I made 20 some flannel infinity scarfs that came out real nice.

Christmas Infinity scarfs

A few other things that are bound to come up;

I drafted my fantacy football team 2 weeks ago and thought I was prepared, but know less than I thought. I ran the Colorado Relay last weekend – 210 miles split between 10 people – it took 29 hours and we ran through the night and rain, I couldn’t walk right for two days.

I hope this was a good crash course in All Things That Are Good, and I hope to see you back soon.